


Body Heat

by littlealex



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-21
Updated: 2008-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:13:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cold out in space, and even colder when someone's missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body Heat

If there was one thing Mal knew about Zoe, it was that she always knew what she gorram wanted.

Mal never really figured it would be him. They were almost brothers; almost, except for the fact that Zoe was never really a man. Never had been. Some people saw her that way, but Mal knew better.

Wash had known better, too, and Mal knew that it was easy for people to see the wrong things in a relationship that'd passed. People had seen a man, hemmed into the cockpit of a ship, allowed no leeway save the occasional trip to Persephone to pick up parts for the ship with the mechanic. Most people 'sposed Wash wore the skirt around the place, and sometimes Mal'd been inclined to believe them all.

Well, 'til he'd up and died on them.

Zoe hadn't been the same since. Oh, she'd seemed all right on the outside. Her innards never showed, and that was what Mal had always respected about her. She kept her feelings far inside her - as was fitting to a woman of her rank. Mal appreciated that. He had trouble enough keeping the rest of his crew together. Didn't mean he couldn't tell that Zoe missed her fallen husband, though. Well, so far he'd more _sensed_ it than anything, but it was River's job to be reminding everyone of things that should be kept hidden, so he left her to it.

That was, he had until the day Zoe'd taken it into her mind to visit his bunk.

Mal had known, right at the start, that it was wrong. Hadn't stopped the matter, though. She'd just lay down beside him at first - naked as the day she was born, mind - and let her fingers wander. Later, Mal told himself he should have been more strict with her, should have pushed her out of his bed and back into her own and they both should have dealt with their demons alone. Loneliness and sadness, they were excuses everyone else used. Most men and all women could get away with murder, so long as they'd lost something they'd admit was important to them.

Still, weren't any kind of excuse for letting her stay.

Zoe hadn't done anything at first, mind. Just lay there, most of her body pressed into the thin mattress Mal had to lay on every night, her fingers resting just at the middle of his chest. Far as Mal could see it, there weren't no harm in that - she just needed someone to hold onto, much as he did, but who else were they meant to go to? Since Inara'd gone, there was hardly a person there who understood what a night's worth of warmth truly meant to a body.

There also wasn't a person there who'd understand what happened between them.

Whole damn thing had happened slowly, like a burn, and Mal hadn't noticed until he'd been scorched for months and there was no turning back. It started with the quiet understanding between them that they'd both lost someone - whether to the worms or the whore house - but it grew all out of his control, as if he'd ever had control.

This time, Zoe was laying there in his bed. Naked, as usual, and stretched out over the blankets, all long limbs and smooth skin. Mal hadn't been counting how long it had been since he'd seen her at dinner, but the way she was laying there, legs spread and her fingers pressing down between folds of skin a man shouldn't ever talk about, he guessed it had only been a while. She'd had this look on her face - one Mal hadn't wanted to disturb - of utter contentment, and it was against all Mal's manly desires to close the hatch and break her concentration. The atmosphere seemed to chill in a second as Zoe looked over at him, but she took a deep breath and her eyes glossed over Mal's features - almost as if he was drunk, though Mal knew she hadn't touched a drop in months.

Mal knew what it was. Looking back, there was really no accounting for the way he behaved. He should've been stronger. He should have ignored the way Zoe's eyes fluttered closed, the way she seemed to ignore the fact it weren't her dead husband that had walked through the door, and he should've told her to get out of his bed.

Problem was, Mal was weaker'n he'd expected.

Zoe was a gorgeous woman, no doubt about that. Always had been. Along with almost every other soldier in the regiment - and that included those gorramn sly women in the comm sector - Mal had wanted to bed her. She was more'n anyone could ask for, not that she were inclined to give herself away. Mal had been happy to serve with her, happy to find that she made a better comrade than bedtime companion, and up 'til now had been happy to leave it all at that.

Mal figured - later on, when everything was passed and forgotten - it wasn't really his fault. Woman came and lay on his bunk and started fingering herself like she was a gorram instrument, he couldn't really be held accountable for his actions. She was more'n teasing him, it weren't a shy come-hither stare, and it barely touched on the mock-desire he'd seen in that bitch who'd lay claim to his husbandhood. Zoe'd hardly ever asked him for a thing, and she weren't asking now, but telling him. He had half a mind to leave, but his body argued the point something fierce at the sight of her watching him.

"You don't come over here and _cao_ me right now, sir, I swear to _tian_ I'll take it into my own hands."

It wasn't so much the rough words she used, but they brought him back to the moment. He'd caught himself up in the fact he'd walked in on a woman on his bed - all naked and touching herself - and barely thought that it might mean he'd want to take some action. It was Zoe, after all, and his stomach twisted at her words but anything Zoe asked for, it more often than not ended up being what he wanted, too.

She turned her head when he tried to kiss her, though, and muttered something low in Chinese, something he didn't hear and probably didn't want to. The rules were set, and Mal followed them far as he could. He had learned over time that women weren't meant to be crossed, and consequences would be dire should he dare. She might be his second outside this room, but should he push the boundaries she'd laid down for him, he'd be thrown out of the airlock of his own ship. No questions asked.

He couldn't remember a time but this one where Zoe had been the one leading, without any sort of deference. He weren't captain in bed, just a body she knew. Probably her only choice. Mal started in fast, his impatience born of many things and deprivation the strongest. It hadn't taken long, not really, and Mal should've known. Woman had gone to all the effort to wind herself up, things'd take their natural course, and it hadn't taken barely a minute. She'd let him in and he pounded into her, thrust so hard he'd almost had pause to ask if it was all right. He didn't need to, though, way she writhed around beneath him, her hips bucking and her fingers slipping back to the one spot Mal couldn't bear to touch. She was slick, so gorramn slick that Mal didn't have to do anything. She was just there, legs spread and her fingers working at herself and all the while her mouth sewn tight shut, like she might say something.

It was rutting, plain and simple. Sort of thing Mal didn't like to think about Jayne getting up to, but it was the sort of entanglement Jayne'd likely find. Nothing personal, nothing more certain than the fact that in the morning it would be as though nothing had happened.

He knew, even then, that they would both go about their duties as they usually did. She'd look to him for orders, stand next to his decisions. He'd whip up some certainty from a place didn't exist in himself, she'd make everyone truly believe it, and life would go on. The absences in their lives - the push to his shove and the bend to her will - they wouldn't feel so acute. The holes they'd left behind, they weren't filled - never could be - but at least they'd feel warm.

It was cold out here, and maybe just a little body heat could go a long way to fixing things.


End file.
